Associate Creative Director, Visualization

Panthalassa; Portland (OR); On-site; USD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Panthalassa, a renewable energy and ocean technology company based in Portland, Oregon, seeks a hands‑on visual designer who can translate engineering concepts into engaging visuals. You’ll work with the CEO, Creative Director, and engineering teams to turn whiteboard sketches and ideas into visuals that explain what we’re building and why it matters.

You think like an engineer and an artist, balancing accuracy with beauty.

Qualifications

• 5+ years professional experience as a 3D artist, animator, concept artist or industrial designer.
• Experience holding your own in strategic conversations about products and technologies that don't yet exist: asking sharp technical questions and understanding engineering reasoning well enough to visualize it accurately.
• Strong grounding in industrial design, mechanical design, or vehicle design, with a mastery of hard surface modeling.
• Exceptional command of light, value, composition, color, staging, mood, form, and spatial scale.
• Strong sense of motion, animation, and camera.
• Experience mentoring, leading, or reviewing the work of other artists, or clear readiness to grow into that responsibility.
• Excellent communicator who is self‑directed, collaborative, and comfortable giving and receiving direct, constructive critique.

Responsibilities

• While here you will work directly with the CEO, Creative Director, and engineering teams to translate emerging ideas into clear, compelling visuals.
• Develop a distinctive visual language for Panthalassa’s technology and guide how it changes over time.
• Lead creative direction for visualizations, from early concepts to drawings to storyboard to finished deliverables like renderings, decks, and animations.
• Build and guide the pipeline for concepting, modeling, texturing, lighting, composition, rendering, and animation.
• Stay hands‑on: sketch, model, build scenes etc. when the work calls for it.
• Direct and review freelance artists’ work, and help grow an in‑house team of 2D, 3D and motion designers.

Job description

Portland, OR

About the Company

We are a renewable energy and ocean technology company committed to rapidly developing and deploying technologies that will ensure a sustainable future for Earth by unlocking the vast energy potential of its oceans. Our focus is on capturing civilizational levels of ultra-low-cost renewable energy for applications including computing and affordable renewable fuels delivered to shore.

The company is a public benefit corporation headquartered in Portland, Oregon, and backed by leading venture capitalists, philanthropic investors, university endowments, and private investment offices. We operate as an idea meritocracy in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

Our staff have worked at organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, Tesla, Apple, Virgin Orbit, Astra, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, New Relic, Bridgewater, Raytheon, Disney Imagineering, and the US Army and Air Force, as well as research universities, startups, and small companies across a range of industries.

About the Job

Our core technology is the node, a device that produces energy in the ocean’s harshest conditions for years at a time without human maintenance or intervention.

You’ll help us picture what’s possible.

We’re designing an ecosystem of massive-scale ocean technologies unlike anything that exists today. You’ll turn loose whiteboard sketches, strategic conversations, engineering concepts, and harebrained ideas into visualizations that help people understand what we’re building and why it matters. These visuals become the catalyst that makes an idea real, builds momentum within the company, and moves the company forward.

You’re as curious about how it works, as you are about how it looks.

You think like an engineer and like an artist. You’re comfortable in a room full of technical people, navigating ambiguity by asking sharp questions, listening closely, and finding ways to make complex and open‑ended ideas clear without butchering accuracy. You’re also obsessed with beauty. The staging, art direction, and finesse that elevates something from the generic and mundane to the extraordinary and unexpected.

You direct and you create.

You’ll lead the visualization pipeline from concept through final render. You’re a hands‑on creative who knows how to sketch, model, texture, light, render, and animate — and how to guide others through the work. You understand what makes an image work from form, composition, and scale, to light, color, and mood. You also know when to step back from the details and consider the bigger picture: how each visualization fits into the Panthalassa story, moves the brand forward, and connects with our other creative work across film and website.

Candidates should have strong interpersonal skills and be able to thrive in a creative, scrappy, and collaborative environment in which the best ideas change the company’s direction on a regular basis.

Responsibilities

Once you’re here you will:

• Work directly with the CEO, Creative Director, and engineering teams to translate emerging ideas into clear, compelling visuals.
• Develop a distinctive visual language for Panthalassa’s technology and guide how it changes over time.
• Lead creative direction for visualizations, from early concepts to drawings to storyboard to finished deliverables like renderings, decks, and animations.
• Build and guide the pipeline for concepting, modeling, texturing, lighting, composition, rendering, and animation.
• Stay hands‑on: sketch, model, build scenes etc. when the work calls for it.
• Direct and review freelance artists’ work, and help grow an in‑house team of 2D, 3D and motion designers.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years professional experience as a 3D artist, animator, concept artist or industrial designer, including a track record of leading visual direction on complex technical, mechanical, or industrial subject matter.
• Experience holding your own in strategic conversations about products and technologies that don't yet exist: asking sharp technical questions and understanding engineering reasoning well enough to visualize it accurately.
• Strong grounding in industrial design, mechanical design, or vehicle design, with a mastery of hard surface modeling.
• Exceptional command of light, value, composition, color, staging, mood, form, and spatial scale.
• Strong sense of motion, animation, and camera.
• Experience mentoring, leading, or reviewing the work of other artists, or clear readiness to grow into that responsibility.
• Excellent communicator who is self‑directed, collaborative, and comfortable giving and receiving direct, constructive critique.
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